Funding Disparities in the South are a Significant Opportunity for Individual Donors

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The old aphorism is true: As the South goes, so goes the nation. The region is one of the fastest growing in the country. It’s expected to gain five Electoral College votes after the 2020 census, while northern Rust Belt states are expected to lose eight.

Ten of the 15 fastest growing cities in the country are in the South. And the South is home to growing communities of immigrants, people of color, LGBTQ people, and other marginalized communities.

The South is also the proving ground for some of the nation’s most regressive public policies.
In the Midwest, wages are too low to support working families because of anti-labor legislation exported from Southern states. The policies and practices of the Jim Crow-era South have been adapted to harass immigrants in the Southwest.

Philanthropic investment in the South from foundations and individual donors is significantly lower than in the rest of the country.

The National Committee for Responsive Philanthropy’s individual donor brief, The Case for Funding in the South, notes that foundations invested just 56 cents-per-person in the South for every dollar-per-person invested elsewhere from 2011-2015.

While data on individual donor support to the South is not available, NCRP’s extensive regional research (including more than 150 interviews with funders and non-profits ) suggest that it is similarly disproportionately low.

The good news is individual donors aren’t beholden to the institutional barriers that prevent foundations from making timely pivots in funding.

They can help begin to fill the gap left by under-investment in the South by institutional philanthropy, and they can give in ways that leverage the huge opportunities for innovation and disruption Southern nonprofit leadership represent.

Individual donors can act quickly and with agility, innovation and flexibility where foundations struggle to keep up with a rapidly changing political context.

Funding in the South doesn’t match the opportunity

The South has high-capacity nonprofit leaders with skills to confront our national challenges:

Southerners get the most out of scant budget resources.

Southerners are experienced working safely and strategically despite threats and intimidation.

Southerners know how to fight white nationalism, having faced it on the frontlines for generations.

Southerners are bridge-builders, with the reality of scarce resources creating a need to break issue siloes and build power across race, gender, immigration status and class.

Giving Compass' Take:
• Medium shares insight from tech company Symph, which provides solutions to the challenges that every nonprofit faces through a web app called The Dollar Effect. It allows donors to try out giving $1 to see how the system works before committing larger amounts.
• For those concerned with both UX and financial transparency, this might be a good way for nonprofits of all sizes to engage with charitable constituents without devoting resources to a whole team of designers.
· Read about increasing the nonprofit sector's effectiveness through culture, success measurements, and governance.
It’s always best to understand why donors give; showing donors why they matter and letting them know how they can help make a difference can easily be done especially with the internet nowadays. Plus, with an added creativity — getting your messages across can rightfully inspire the trust (and hearts) of people from around the world.
But how far does it actually go? To the donation page hopefully.
We initiated The Dollar Effect to also answer an often overlooked question: Why should I trust you(r online form)?
It’s important to let donors understand the basics of how the online donation system works, but rarely would they bother to ask. It’s easily understandable if they have doubts about the forms.
A good way to it is to let them try it out themselves without having to risk so much. The Dollar Effect initiative lets donors try out giving just a small amount (just a dollar!) to see how it goes — how the system works and where their dollar goes.
It’s a good entry level to fully engage your donors as it gives your donors the opportunity to act right away.
Read the full article about The Dollar Effect by Symph at Medium.

Looking for a way to get involved?

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